


On Your Birthday, You Eat Cake

by letmegeekatyou



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Sam and Dean have an adult conversation, Sam deals with emotional stuff, Sam's Birthday, or at least happyish?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1557854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmegeekatyou/pseuds/letmegeekatyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"On the morning of his 31st birthday, Sam woke with a start from a nightmare he couldn't remember. He had slept in--Castiel was already up, his side of the bed cool--but he wished he had slept more of the day away. He turned his face back into the pillow, but it was no use, and music was coming from somewhere down the hall, and if he didn't get up soon, Cas or Dean would coming looking for him.</p><p>Somehow he should have known, he thought later, that he would find them in the kitchen, breakfast made, cake in the oven, the two people he loved most in the world trying to love him and give him something and not seeing--not wanting to see--that he didn't want any of it. But how do you say that? How do you look in their eyes and tell them they got it wrong when all they wanted to do was give you everything?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Your Birthday, You Eat Cake

On the morning of his 31st birthday, Sam woke with a start from a nightmare he couldn't remember. He had slept in--Castiel was already up, his side of the bed cool--but he wished he had slept more of the day away. He turned his face back into the pillow, but it was no use, and music was coming from somewhere down the hall, and if he didn't get up soon, Cas or Dean would coming looking for him.

Somehow he should have known, he thought later, that he would find them in the kitchen, breakfast made, cake in the oven, the two people he loved most in the world trying to love him and give him something and not seeing--not wanting to see--that he didn't want any of it. But how do you say that? How do you look in their eyes and tell them they got it wrong when all they wanted to do was give you everything?

"Well, good morning. Barely. Your boyfriend's rubbing off on you, Sammy. Haven't seen you sleep this late in forever." Dean handed him a cup of coffee as Cas came over to kiss his cheek.

"Happy birthday, Sam. We made you breakfast. I was going to bring it to you in bed, but now that you're here we can eat together. If Dean tells you I burned the pancakes, he's lying."

Dean snorted and started pulling plates of food from the oven where he'd been keeping them warm, and Cas took juice from the fridge, but Sam couldn't move. He was looking at the coffee in his hand and had a sudden urge to throw it, to see how much would spill before it hit the wall and shattered, to still the motion and silence the voices around him.

He set the cup down gingerly on the counter.

"I'm going out," he said, his own eyebrows lifting in surprise. "I've gotta... I'm going."

"What are you talking about, man? Look at this food. How can you say no to this?" Dean brandished a tray of bacon at him. Cas just frowned.

"Where do you have to go? If you need something, I can--"

"No, I just need to get out of here for a little while."

"Sam--"

"I'm fine," he promised, kissing Cas's furrowed brow and nodding at Dean before walking out to the garage. He paused for a minute there, thinking over each car, seeing each on the road like a scene from a movie.  _Which ending do I want?_  he found himself wondering.  _Which story is mine?_

Finally, he chose a motorcycle, thinking the air would do him good. In a car, he thought, there are always other people, or spaces where they could be, and even that felt like too much company.

***

The road was quiet. Friday morning, no one had anywhere to be but work, and most were there already. Sam had no destination in mind, just a restlessness and an unnamed fear deep inside that looked like Dean and Cas and home and family. It looked like Jessica, too, and Mom, but her face was wrong. It was the face of the girl he'd met, not the woman who had leaned over his cradle. Her, he couldn't remember.

Sam didn't let himself think about the past very often, because he always had a vague notion that if he dwelt on it too long, it would suck him back in, and he'd never be able to get back out. But the present was a heavy weight on his shoulders and an angel in his head, and the past, for once, was less frightening.

But the past...it wasn't his. He realized it as the woods faded around him, leaving a wide horizon gaping on every side. It was Azazel's, and Dean's, and Lucifer's. It was the demon blood that he still felt trickling through him, cold and metallic, even though Cas had assured him that the trials had purged whatever was left. It was dying in Dean's arms and being afraid, and it was coming back in Dean's debt and being  _more_  afraid, and more sure that his life was not his own.

But how do you say that? How do you say, years later, I wish you hadn't given so much for me? You don't, Sam knew. You sweep it under the rug. You pretend that it didn't happen, or that it didn't matter, or that it matters but not in the way he thinks.

He wished the road would turn. It was too straight now, felt too much like he was going somewhere, approaching something. It felt like every road trip with a monster at the end, because what else had he ever been on the road for? When was the last time he had driven this far without intending to kill something when he arrived? Maybe with Amelia, but that year...it felt like a dream. Less real than anything else in his life, maybe because he chose it, and that made it the odd year out. Like Stanford, it didn't fit with the rest of his life and seemed to belong to someone else.

Finally, he couldn't take the flat, forward looking road anymore, and he pulled off onto a dirt track that lead through a field. Dean and Cas would be worried by now, he realized with a twinge of guilt. Breakfast would be cold. The cake would probably be burnt, if Dean had taken off after him. He vaguely hoped Cas knew how to work a fire extinguisher and laughed bitterly. He should care more. He should feel awful at having left them like that, when they'd done so much. Sam would Sam would have turned back an hour out and headed home, apologized, microwaved the coffee until it was hot again and celebrated his birthday with his family. But he  _was_  Sam, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't accept anything today. He couldn't be given anything. He couldn't stand the thought of being touched or looked at in that way that family looks at you, like they know you. Like you belong to them.

The dirt road let him out on a curving back route that traced the edges of the farms and gave him some peace. He had to watch the road for turns, and it made him feel safer to change direction, like he could keep an eye on more of the horizon. Keep it from sneaking up on him as he sped along, tangled up in his own head.

Maybe it wasn't fair. Maybe he was holding too much against them, too much of his past and too many of their mistakes. He didn't know how to stop, though. He'd forgiven them so many times, even when they didn't ask for forgiveness. He'd forgiven Cas for breaking his wall a thousand, a hundred thousand times. Every time he kissed Cas or said his name or fell asleep next to him, it was another small act of forgiveness. So why did he still sometimes dream of Lucifer wearing Cas's face?

And Dean... Dean was sharper in Sam's mind, a volatile  _force_  that he loved and wanted to love and was afraid to love. Dean clung to him so tightly, and Sam knew that it  _was_  love, but there was something else in it, Dean's own fear and need that made him hard and kept them wrapped up so tightly in each other's arms that neither could see the other's face. It made Dean do terrible things. It made Dean  _let himself_  do terrible things, and Sam didn't know how to fix them, and he resented that he was the one having to figure out how. If it was even possible.

Sam ran out of gas sooner than he'd expected, although it was later than he'd realized, too. The afternoon was winding down, although there were hours of daylight left and the heat of the sun hadn't faded much. He hadn't passed a gas station in a while, so he decided to keep walking as he had been going, hope he stumbled on something. He almost regretted leaving his phone, but the thought of the missed calls and text messages and Dean tracking him by gps just made him feel anxious, and he decided he was better off without it.

Walking was good, anyway. It gave his body something different to occupy itself, and his limbs began to feel looser, less locked up than they had on the bike. It had been a long time since he'd gone for a walk and not for a run to keep his body in shape. A long time since he'd simply used his body, not to  _do_  anything, not with a goal or agenda but simply occupying it and moving in it, like the way you sit in silence with a good friend, just being together, having that be enough.

Maybe this was all he needed today, just to  _be_. Not to be Dean's brother or Cas's boyfriend or a hunter or anything else, but just to remind himself of his own existence, of his complete separateness from everything and of how peacefully he could coexist with himself. For once in his thirty-one years, he was setting aside everything that had been imposed on him. Leaving it behind in the bunker and on the road and realizing that without it, he was...okay.

"I'm okay," he mused out loud, letting the words settle in the air and drift behind him as he walked, testing out their sound and their weight. "I'm okay." And he was. Whatever was going to happen, with Dean, with Cas, with the powers and forces coming for them all, he knew now that he could stand at the center of it, and he could fight alongside his family and they might win or lose, but in the midst of everything, he would be okay. And that was enough for him. For now, for today. It would be enough.

***

He finally found a farmhouse where he could borrow some gas and make a phone call.

"Sammy, where the hell are you? What the hell, man? We've been worried sick, and you left your phone. We were  _this_  close to getting Crowley to help us track you down, you sonofabitch."

"I'm fine, Dean. I'll be home later tonight. I'm sorry I worried you." There was a scuffling on the other line, and then it was Cas talking and Dean still swearing in the background.

"I'm sorry, Sam. I'm not sure why you left, but whatever it is, we can fix it. You don't need to stay away."

"Cas, it's okay. I'm coming home. I just... I needed some space."

"If you're not angry at me, does that mean I can be angry with you? Because I was very worried, and now I'm suddenly very angry and very relieved, and I don't really know what to do with those feelings."

Sam laughed, although he tried not to let Cas hear it.

"Have Dean take you into the shooting range. Tell him you want to fire something that makes a lot of noise. It'll make you feel better."

"I will do that. You are coming home, though?"

"Yeah, Cas. I'm coming home."

"Good. I love you."

"I love you, too."

***

Dean was waiting for him in the garage, sitting on Baby's hood with a beer in hand. Sam joined him, appreciating the familiarity of the scene, although it was still strange to see the Impala in a garage instead of under the open sky.

"We gonna talk about earlier, Houdini?" Dean asked, handing him a beer.

"I don't know, honestly," Sam answered, taking a drink. "Short version? I've had a few rough birthdays. I was feeling tense, and I needed some room to breathe."

"There a particular reasons you couldn't take your phone?" Dean wasn't looking at him, and Sam could hear the worry and anger and sadness mingling in his voice, and he wasn't sure which one to respond to.

"I'm sorry I worried you."

"That's not what I asked."

"Dean, I think this is a bigger conversation than you want to have right now."

"Goddammit, Sammy." But he wasn't angry now; he just rubbed his face and frowned. "I need you to talk to me about this, because I can't handle you disappearing. I just... I can't. I don't have it in me to cope with that, okay?"

"I know," Sam answered quietly. "Here's the thing... I'm a lot of things to a lot of people, to you more than anybody. And sometimes I feel like I get lost in that. Like you see me as your little brother, the brother who died, the brother who let Lucifer free--no, it's okay. The brother who went to Hell and came back broken and almost died a hundred times, and I understand, Dean, I do. I get that you can't help seeing those things when you look at me, but it's a hell of a lot to take. And all of that, it's... it's not really me, you know? I'm just... I'm just Sam.

"I need you to see me like that. I need you to  _treat_ me like an adult, and I need you... I need you to be sorry for letting Gadreel possess me, not because it went to shit but because you did it without my okay."

Sam took a deep breath. Dean still wasn't looking at him, and he was worried that this was going to be another conversation like all the ones before, where he tried to find the words to explain everything and Dean heard nothing but "you don't love me" or "I don't love you." But then his brother nodded, just a little.

"I hear you. I don't know if I can, though, Sam. I don't know if I can be sorry you're not dead right now."

"Dean--"

"But I  _hear_  you. I can try. I don't want to put all that shit on you, Sammy. I don't want you to think that's what I see when I look at you. I don't like it, man."

"But you'll try?"

"Yeah," he answered, finally looking up. "That I can do."

"Thanks."

"Yeah. Happy birthday." They both laughed at that, a little grimly.

"Cas upstairs?"

"Mhm," Dean nodded. "Tore through our ammo supplies like they were nothing. He was almost in worse shape than me, thinking you were gone for good, that he'd done something."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Go on, go patch things up with loverboy. I'm gonna stay down here a while and clean up that motorcycle. Looks like you took her mud wrestling."

"Alright. G'night, Dean."

"'Night, Sammy."

***

"Cas?" Sam opened the bedroom door quietly, in case the angel was asleep, but he needn't have. Castiel was standing by the closet, hangers in hand.

"You have a lot of plaid, Sam. Have you considered branching out into other patterns?"

"Babe, what are you doing?"

"I'm organizing your closet, what does it look like? I had to do something, and I ran out of ammunition for the loudest weapons, and I baked another birthday cake--it's in the fridge, by the way--and then I came in here, and I was going to read, but I kept reading the same paragraph over and over, and I coudn't remember what I'd just--"

"Hey, it's okay. Come here?" Sam asked quietly, closing the door as the angel wrapped his arms around him. They held each other like that for a while before Castiel pulled back.

"Do you want to talk?" He looked almost afraid, as if Sam must have some terrible news to tell. But Sam was tired in every way, and spending the day alone had left him with a simple desire to lay in his bed with Cas in his arms and sleep. He shook his head.

"No. I mean, yeah, we can talk, but maybe tomorrow?" Cas narrowed his eyes at him, looking for signs, Sam supposed, of an impending disaster. But he found none.

"Tomorrow, then. Would you... do you still need space? I made the bed in the other room, in case you did." Of course he had. And there was no question or demand in that aside from  _what do you need_?, and Sam felt himself forgive Cas all over again, as he did every day. And that was something they would have to talk about, along with a million other things, but for now, Sam was okay, and being okay was a really, really good place to be.

"I'd like you to stay," he finally said. "I'll sleep better with you next to me. But maybe we should have some of that cake first?" Because who stops to eat in the middle of an emotional-crisis-roadtrip? Sam was starving. And because Cas had made him a cake and organized his closet, and because Dean was cleaning his motorcycle and had promised to _try_ , and because his birthday wasn't over yet. And on your birthday, you eat cake.


End file.
